1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic electronic component and a method of manufacturing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Examples of electronic components formed of ceramic materials include a capacitor, an inductor, a piezoelectric element, a varistor, a thermistor, and the like.
Multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs), ceramic electronic components, have a small size and high capacitance and are easily mounted on an electronic device.
MLCCs are chip-type capacitors mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB) of various electronic products such as imaging devices such as a liquid crystal display (LCD) and a plasma display panel (PDP), computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and portable phones, to be used for charging or discharging electricity.
The MLCC may include a plurality of stacked dielectric layers, and internal electrodes having different polarities and disposed to face each other, having the dielectric layer interposed therebetween, and external electrodes electrically connected to the internal electrodes.
Recently, with the development of small-sized electronic products, an MLCC is also required to have a small size and high capacitance.
Thus, various methods have been attempted for thinned and multilayer dielectric layers and internal electrode. Recently, as the thickness of a dielectric layer is reduced, multilayer ceramic electronic components in which the number of stacked layers is increased have been manufactured.
To realize such a high degree of capacitance, the thicknesses of a dielectric layer and internal electrode are reduced to allow the number of stacked layers to be increased by an amount equal to the degree to which the thickness of the MLCC has been reduced.
However, as dielectric layers and internal electrodes are thinned, the thicknesses of the internal electrodes may be different. Due to the reasons as described above, adjacent internal electrodes may be disconnected and may be partially disconnected, and the area of the internal electrodes is reduced by an amount of the disconnected portions, thereby reducing capacitance.
In addition, main consideration for MLCCs may be occurrence of internal cracks as internal stress is increased due to mismatch of contraction behavior between an internal electrode and a dielectric layer as well as capacitance.
In particular, when residual carbonaceous materials are not easily removed due to fine grain of a dielectric layer during the manufacture of electronic products, various types of cracks may occur in a ceramic body during firing the product, which is a main factor of degrading product reliability.
The following Related Art Document discloses a multilayer ceramic capacitor that prevents cracks from occurring and ensures connectivity of an electrode to have high capacitance, but does not disclose numerical definition of limiting connectivity of internal electrodes.